


Pretending to Be Myself

by ViaLethe



Series: The Popular Theory [12]
Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Porn With Plot, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29258985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: Mal used to believe he'd see the people he loved again when he died, but River knows that's impossible.
Relationships: Malcolm Reynolds/River Tam
Series: The Popular Theory [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1515428
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Pretending to Be Myself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akingnotaprincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akingnotaprincess/gifts).



She finds him on the bridge, of course. “I heard you through the walls,” she says, reproachful, but still pleased as he reaches for her, tugging her into place, sitting in the pilot’s chair with him.

“Didn’t mean to wake you, though can’t say as I mind the company.”

That much, she knows is true without searching; his eyes tell her that much, distanced, the stubborn line between his brows, the urgent way his mouth seeks hers. 

Still, his thoughts catch against hers, old grievances and guilts, not quite subsumed enough to escape her. “You used to believe,” she says, abstract, fingertips of thought probing out the spaces in his mind between past and present, the fragile webs and pathways spun out to bridge the two. _Arcs_ , she thinks, the humming wires of Serenity’s console live all around her, the current of their aura like a halo. “But now you hide.”

“Ain’t hiding anything, darlin’,” he says, and it’s hard to focus, hard to keep her mind from fragmenting out like the billions of stars serving as their backdrop when his hands are on her skin, with their resulting cascading patterns of feeling, nerves lighting up.

It’s a contradiction, true and not true all at the same time. “Not from me,” she agrees, shifting in Mal’s lap, holding his head in her hands, fingers threading through his hair, grounding her in the sparking currents to him, to the impulses firing under her fingers. “From yourself. You wanted to believe there was more, once.”

His synapses firmly refuse to be deterred by her twisting pathways, his hands persistent, pushing her dress from her shoulders, baring her to the cool air; to the stars. “Can’t see myself needing any more’n this, truth be told.” 

The physical part of her smiles, and kisses him, and gasps at the sensations those hands leave in their wake, trailing light over neck, shoulder, down the line of her ribcage, and from navel back up, over old silver scars and flushed pink nipples, peaked under his fingers until she shudders, trembling with overloaded nerves.

The mind-part of her - where _River_ truly resides - divides in two, one portion devoted to wallowing in sensation, the other clicking over, pondering the lie in his thoughts.

Belief changes you, she’d been taught, and she knows that, knows it bone-deep, every time she looks at Mal and believes he saved her, believes he bet his world on her being a person. But what he believes, here in this space where they’re always surrounded by loss - that’s the smoke, the short in her brain, the fragments she can’t manage to piece back together.

Later, after they’ve finished and the haze clears her brain, she catches a stray scrap of thought, and the patterns shift, and fire in the right way, and she understands. “You used to believe you’d see the people you loved again when you died,” she says, drowsy, half floating, playing with a loose button on his shirt as he holds her, the sweat along her back drying down just enough to leave her skin clammy and cool under his idly stroking fingers; _like a dead thing_ her mind thinks, before she can stop it, and she shuts her eyes to make sure it won’t escape her mouth.

His fingers stop in their pattern-tracing, his other hand tightening briefly on her arm. “Yeah, maybe. Used to be I believed a lot of fool things.”

“Now you don’t believe, so you miss them all over again,” she says, sitting up, the chill seeping into her bones as she stares at him, insidious, inexorable. _Mother, planet, comrades, friends, Shepherd, Wash,_ her brain spits out; a recitation, a litany, though she pushes it back, keeps it down. “And you’re afraid for the future, but you won’t let yourself be, _can’t_ let yourself be.” _Zoe, someday,_ her brain continues, merciless. _Kaylee. Me._

Stillness, for a long moment; a stillness where he doesn’t move, doesn’t think, doesn’t touch - and then he blinks, and shifts, and tucks her head back down against his chest, hands stroking as he stares over the dark of her hair into the scattered dark of space, at the stars burning on. “Not much point in any of it, way I see it.” For a long moment, she thinks that’s all, that there won’t be anything more, until he says, “What is it you think, Albatross?”

River watches the stars; watches the glorious burn billions of miles away that she knows will someday end, like everything else. _Life is just a series of chemical and electrical impulses_ , she thinks, _and when they stop, you’re gone_. And yet - she feels him, warm and breathing under her cheek; hears the beat of his heart, low and insistent against her ear; she sees the stars, their burning witnesses in the boundless dark, and her mind, tapped into the arcing currents of the ship, tracks and touches every mind in it. Every one of her people, bright and connected and burning, same as those stars, and against all logic, she can’t say it. “I hope you’re wrong,” she says instead, and feels rather than hears his breath hitch, feels the words _me too, darlin_ dropped, muffled, into her hair, before she sighs, and closes her eyes.


End file.
